Quicksand Page 11

  Letting the drone of words pass him by, Paul recalled Mirza's comment on that meeting, which he had attended because Ferdie Silva was laid up with a temperature of a hundred.

  "Why not draft a set of permanent all-purpose minutes for that committee, like a perpetual calendar? Think of the time it would save -- especially time spent listening to Holinshed!"

  He hid the smile which the idea brought to his lips. Holinshed didn't approve of people smiling while he was talking.

  His own situation on this committee, as indeed at the hospital, was anomalous. In a larger hospital he would have been working under a senior registrar. Chent, with its average of less than three hundred patients, was torn between Holinshed's desire to have it treated as a "large" hospital and the determination of the Hospital Group to regard it as a "small" one. The staff structure exhibited the consequences.

  In passing, Paul remembered suddenly a phrase from a letter Iris had received, years ago, from an official at the Ministry. During their engagement, as though having second thoughts after learning how determined he was to work in mental hospitals rather than go into general practice, she had written to inquire about prospects for promotion and salary if he stuck to his plan.

  "This Ministry," the official told her frostily, "does not lay down a rigid staffing pattern or establishment of ranks for individual hospitals."

  -- You can say that again!

  His discovery of the letter had precipitated a row that almost terminated the engagement.

  -- Suppose it had broken up? Would I be here now?

  As always, his imagination conjured up a painful vision of being resident here in conventional fashion, having to lie awake night after night listening to that maddening cracked bell overhead, until exhaustion drove him to a fatal error, a patient killed himself, censure followed from the General Medical Council . . .

  With an effort Paul dragged his mind back to the things that had attracted him about his post. In particular, the psychiatric registrar here enjoyed a large measure of independence compared to his opposite number in a hospital with more patients, because there was a gap in the ladder above him. What he had failed to reckon with was the way in which the extra responsibilities piled on top of his routine work, thus slashing the time he had expected to devote to study.

  -- When did I last have a clear weekend? Beginning of December, I think, when Iris insisted on doing the Christmas shopping. . . . Oh, come off it. Suppose I were at Blickham General: I could easily be working a twenty-hour day, with premature labours, survivors from car accidents, scalded children, drunks with their heads cut open . . .

  There would be a chance to catch up with his textbooks tonight, at least; he'd jammed three of them into his overnight bag. He'd have to look in at the patients' dance, but he could get away with an hour of that, possibly less, and retreat to the staff sitting-room for peace and quiet.

  He sneaked a glance at the clock on the wall. They were down to the halfway mark on the agenda and it wasn't quite ten o'clock yet. Marvellous: and an even shorter session than usual, and he hldn't been called on to utter a word.

  "Thank you," Holinshed murmured as yet another item on the agenda was rubber-stamped. "That brings us to number ten, any other business. Has anybody . . .?"

  "I think we should discuss the item which appears in this week's local paper," Dr Jewell said firmly. "Dr Fidler, you have a copy of it. Perhaps you'd show the chairman?"

  Dismayed, Paul pushed his copy of the paper towards Holinshed. There was a frigid pause.

  At length Holinshed said, "Are you certain that will serve any useful purpose?"

  "It's aroused a lot of public concern," Jewell countered. "Several of my patients have raised the matter with me. A mental hospital is an awkward neighbour at the best of times, but when something like this happens the situation is aggravated."

  Paul edged forward on his chair. "Dr Jewell, you're talking as though one of our patients had escaped! The way to look at it, surely, is to remember it's just as well it happened near here, so that there were people on the spot capable of coping with the problem."

  -- I think I just earned a smidgin of approval from Holy Joe!

  "I'm afraid you aren't quite with me," JeweIl said. "What I'm referring to is not the event itself but the way it was handled. I don't wish to bring personalities into this, just to remind everyone that relations between Chent and the public aren't improved by discounting the legitimate fears of lay people regarding lunatics."

  The words burst from Paul's lips before he could check them: "Has Mrs Weddenhall been getting at you?"

  "Dr Fidler, please!" Holinshed muttered.

  "I don't know what you mean by 'getting at me,'" Jewell retorted. "But she's taken a good deal of interest in all this, and as a JP and a prominent local figure she'd bound to influence public opinion."

  Somehow, without realising, Paul was on his feet. "Then let me tell you something which she didn't! What your precious Mrs Weddenhall was proposing to do was to hunt this maniac down with wolf-hounds and a posse armed with shotguns! And the -- the maniac turned out to be a half-pint girl who wouldn't come up to the shoulder of the man she's supposed to have attacked. Do you want me to send for her so that you can see for yourself?"

  "I hardly think that will be necessary," Holinshed declared in a forceful tone. Paul sat down again, shaking as much from embarrassment at his own uncharacteristic outburst as from the anger that had prompted it.

  "My apologies, Dr Jewell," Holinshed continued. "But I'm compelled to agree with Fidler -- though not with the way he expressed himself. The matter does not fall within the purview of this committee and I propose to rule further discussion out of order. And if that's all, I think we should adjourn right away."

  The door of the hall was open. Still trembling. Paul walked towards it for a breath of fresh air.

  -- Christ, there are times when I want to get to hell out of this place and forget I ever saw it!

  He lit a cigarette with unsteady hands, eyes fixed on one of the big white Daimler ambulances which was parked across the driveway, rear doors open. People moved towards it. For a second he didn't recognise who was among them, his mind being too full of other things. Suddenly it penetrated. He checked his watch: not quite twenty to eleven, and he'd made the appointment at Blickham General himself for eleven sharp. He swung on his heel, catching sight of Ferdie Silva making for the stairs.

  "Ferdie! Do me a favour? Are you going to be in for lunch?"

  The plump Guianese nodded.

  "It's my duty. Stand in for me till I get back, will you?" The duty tour ran from noon until noon, though this was seldom a nuisance except at weekends.

  "Provided you're not too long about it," Silva consented doubtfully.

  "No, two o'clock should be the latest." Feverishly Paul thrust his overnight bag through the window of the porter's office. "Look after this for me, would you? Thanks a million, Ferdie -- do the same for you sometime."

  And he dashed out of the door just in time to flag down the ambulance taking Urchin for her head to be X-rayed.

  *17*

  This ambulance, he noted with relief as he squeezed in alongside the male nurse occupying the passengers' section of the bench seat in the cab, was not one of the security vehicles used for transporting the badly disturbed cases, but what he'd heard one of the drivers refer to as a "walking wounded bus" -- its stretcher-racks convertible into ordinary seating or else capable of being folded back to make room for wheelchairs.

  He twisted around in his place and peered through the glass separating the cab from the rear compartment. The security vehicles had such glass, too -- more of it, indeed, if you thought only in terms of area -- but theirs was reinforced with wire until what it brought to Paul's mind was the back of Mrs Weddenhall's Bentley, caged for the transport of her enormous dogs.

  The moment he showed his face, Urchin made as though to jump from her seat. She was dragged back by the nurse beside her, a girl called Woodside, pre
tty, but much too tall to be popular with the men -- easily matching Paul's five feet eleven. She had a reputation for treating patients roughly. He scowled at her.

  There was only one other patient in the back, a harmlessly silly man called Doublingale. Paul decided he should have ridden there rather than in front -- the nurse beside him had extremely sharp hip-bones -- but it was too late to change his mind now.

  The trip was slower than usual owing to the Saturday morning shopping traffic in Blickham. Paul kept sneaking glances over his shoulder, noting Urchin's reaction to her surroundings. These were hardly attractive: the fringe of red-brick houses that turned the nearer side of Yemble into a dormitory for the larger town was itself dull, and beyond it lay bleak towers of council apartments served by another parallel road. It gave way shortly to small untidy factories, a scrapyard, the cattle-market and some railway goods sidings.

  To Urchin, however, the view was apparently something to be absorbed without criticism. Only at one point did she display anything but intent interest: when they halted for a red light outside a butcher's shop just before reaching their destination. For a long moment she gazed in seeming disbelief, then swallowed hard and shut her eyes until they moved off.

  -- Of course. The episode with the bacon. Hmmm. . . . Not just vegetarian, but actually revolted by the sight of meat. Which brings me back to this notion of culture shock. But what the hell kind of culture?

  He'd sent the tape and sample of writing to the university, but there was no telling when he would receive a verdict from the experts.

  The young houseman in charge of the morning's X-ray schedule at Blickham General was very apologetic about the three emergencies from a car-crash who had shot his appointments to hell, but by the sound of it all three might be suffering from skull fractures, so Paul was undisposed to complain. He glanced around the outpatients' waiting-room, chilly and depressing, and abruptly snapped his fingers as he recalled what Hofford had said about photographs of Urchin.

  "That's all right," he exclaimed. "In fact, it suits me very well. I'll bring her back later, shall I?"

  "Suit yourself, but try not to be longer than thirty minutes." The houseman looked lingeringly at Urchin, huddled in a child's woollen overcoat. "Nothing serious, I hope?"

  "It's hard to say. The poor kid doesn't speak English."

  "As a result of something? I see. Pity! Dreadfully young to go off her rocker, isn't she?"

  -- Are you? Aren't you?

  The problem buzzed maddeningly in Paul's brain like a trapped fly as he led Urchin across the entrance yard of the hospital, very conscious of the eyes of the driver in the ambulance which had brought them. The photographer's shop he had mentioned to Hofford was virtually opposite, and the driver watched them all the way.

  Portrait photos mounted on thread jumped as he pushed open the door. Behind the counter, a suave young man framed by a black velvet curtain looked up.

  "Good morning, sir, Harvey Samuels at your service, what can I do for you?"

  His tone was weary, as though he was tired of doing anything for anyone.

  "You do passport photos while you wait?" Paul asked.

  "Yes, sir. Fleeing the country, are you?" An insincere smile. "Never mind me, sir, just my little joke, you know. Is it for yourself or the young lady?"

  "For her."

  "Three for ten and six, that all right? Come this way, please," be added to Urchin, raising a flap of the counter.

  "I'll have to come with her, I'm afraid," Paul said. "She doesn't understand English."

  Surprise fleeted across Samuels's face. "The pictures are for a British passport, are they, sir? I'm afraid I wouldn't know if they're suitable for any other country."

  "They're not for a passport at all. I just want some pictures in a hurry."

  Samuels shrugged and pushed back the curtain. Encouraging Urchin with a smile, Paul accompanied the photographer into a cramped little room dominated by floodlights and a group of three cameras aimed at a plain metal stool. On the wall behind the stool a white sunburst was painted to give portraits a sort of halo effect.

  "Get her to sit down, please," Samuels said, switching on his lights.

  "Don't go to a lot of trouble," Paul warned. "A good plain likeness is all I need."

  "Making the young lady plain is probably beyond even my abilities, sir," Samuels answered as though it were a stock compliment,

  Paul attempted to lead Urchin to the stool, but she baulked and clung to his hand, wide eyes staring at the cameras.

  -- Don't let me down now, Urchin! You weren't put off by the tape-recorder, so why should this bother you?

  He gave her shoulder a reassuring pat, and she timorously yielded. But the hard fear remained on her face. Since Samuels took the injunction about a simple likeness literally, it was captured on the plate.

  -- I hope her friends or family or whatever recognise her with that ghastly expression!

  Relieved that the job was over, she stood as close to the door as possible while he was paying for the pictures and arranging to pick them up before returning to Chent.

  -- Did she expect to be shot, or something?

  But she surprised him for the latest of many times when he opened the door to go out. Catching his arm, she pointed at one of the pictures on display, then at her own face. She suddenly turned down her mouth and narrowed her eyes in a parody of the expression she had worn in the studio. It lasted only a second, and was wiped away in a peal of laughter.

  -- in other words: I must have looked hideous!

  Grinning, he escorted her back to the hospital. A car drove by as they left the shop; absently he put his arm on her shoulder to prevent her walking in front of it. Equally absently he forgot to take it off until they were crossing the hospital yard and he realised the ambulance driver was still at the wheel of his vehicle.

  -- That's how to start gossip. Mustn't do it.

  But the impulse was hard to resist, nonetheless. Urchin was so childlike in many ways that all his paternal instincts were aroused.

  -- If only Iris . . . But we've been through that, and I don't feel ready for a replay of the argument yet.

  The houseman was just coming in search of them when they arrived, and led them straight to the X-ray room. A nurse entered Urchin's particulars on a form, made a quick check of her hair for metal clips or anything that might show on the plate, and opened the inner door with its red radiation-danger sign.

  Over Urchin's shoulder Paul had one clear view of the equipment: a couch, a chair, various supports for legs and arms requiring examination, and the blunt-snouted machine itself.

  Then Urchin had spun around.

  "Hey, where do you think you're going?" the nurse said, making to seize her arm. Fast as a striking snake the arm was out of reach, and back again, fingers straight in a jab to the inside of the nurse's elbow. She screamed and dropped the papers she was clutching.

  Paul, petrified with astonishment, put up a hand as though to ward Urchin off, saying stupidly; "Now just a second . . . !"

  But he was in her way, and that was enough. She slammed him off balance with the point of her shoulder, hurling her tiny body upwards like a pouncing cheetah and driving at the vulnerable base of his sternum. He doubled up, all the wind knocked out of him, and she was past him, out of the room, and gone.

  *18*

  "Patient exhibited unaccountable fear of the X-ray equipment," Paul wrote with careful legibility. "It was judged inadvisable to make a second attempt at securing plates of her skull, as her violent reaction -- "

  He stopped, set down the pen, and lit a cigarette, wondering about the rest of the sentence he was entering in his report. Absently his left hand wandered to the pit of his stomach where Urchin had charged into him with such deadly effect.